What Do the Dreams Say?

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

Sigmund Freud

If we observe, every bit of this world speaks; in astoundingly unique ways and languages. Sometimes, silence of fall speaks volumes, and sometimes loud roars of monsoon fail to convey the true meanings. Mother Nature has its own language and so does our soul. Soul expresses majorly through two important channels; one is the gut feeling, and the other is dreams. We all see dreams, but many of us cannot recall what we were dreaming last night. Insomnia is considered a disease. Similarly, not dreaming is also seen as something abnormal going on in our heads. Dreams are of many kinds; few are abstract, others are very sequential whereas, a few of them appear to be repetitive and vivid

Psychology emphasizes on dreams and says that they are the symbolic representation of our psyche majorly unconscious. There is plenty of research work done by Freud to interpret dreams. Similarly, another renowned psychologist Carl Jung is known for its amazing dream analysis. He felt that people should analyze their own dreams, think about them and meditate on them in order to get something out of them. He says that dreams exhibit our internalized characters and feelings and are a raw picture of our mind. Therefore, we can say that a dream is an involuntary and spontaneous product of the unconscious mind and is usually obscure and difficult to understand because it is made up of symbols and pictures.

In our society dreams are given a paramount status. According to research, women remember their dreams more than men do. Being a mental health practitioner, I believe that dreaming is a higher level of consciousness and it shows how connected a person is with his inner self.

Discussing it in depth, dreams are of two kinds: one which we see on daily basis errands or chores we do in the day, it includes things on our mind, anxiety about certain tasks and plans etc. Second kinds of dreams are those which are really deep meaningful ones, and include material from the closets of the unconscious. It is generally accepted by dream analysts now; if a dream comes in a repetitive manner then your unconscious mind is trying to tell you something.

I personally believe that dreams have compensatory nature, feelings we suppress do play out in our dreams. People who are claustrophobic might see dreams as if someone is after them. Some people who experience sadness may dream of falling into a deep black pit of darkness. What role do dreams play in our lives? Do we really understand what they are trying to tell us?

Allowing your own self to experience those visions without interpreting them can help understand dreams better. The fear of exploring the abstract broken parts of dreams is one thing which holds us back from looking into our unconscious. How many of us can dare to sit back and look at what messages our dreams are bringing from the unconscious? By avoiding and ignoring our dreams we miss-out the royal road to our inner self.

Self-exploration itself is an act of courage and not considering our dreams would make our journey very much unexplored and limited. People with strong imaginations usually see vivid dreams. There is a thin line between dreams with messages and hallucinations. To understand what do the dreams say, following steps need to be followed,

• Allow your-self to dream without giving any interpretations or judgments. 
• Write them down as it is, and as much as your memory permits.
• Connecting the dots and patterns of recurring vivid dreams with your real life. 

We all day dream but very few of us allow ourselves to dream in real terms, which I reckon, requires loads of courage and strength.